Historic Denver school reopens as a cafe and beer garden
The Evans School, designated a historic place in 1980, is now open as the Schoolyard Beer Garden and Cafe.
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A stately brick building that once served as a Denver elementary school, sat vacant for decades, and most recently housed artist studios, reopens today as a cafe and beer garden.
Schoolyard Beer Garden and Schoolyard Cafe, 1115 Acoma St., occupies the grounds, hallways and cafeteria of what was once the Evans School. Built in 1904, the school was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
City Street Investors, one of the redevelopers of Union Station, and partners Fred and Jerry Glick closed on the $11 million building in 2019. The coronavirus pandemic stymied the opening of what was initially going to be a co-working space, said Joe Vostrejs, one of the firm’s founders and partners.
“We took a long time figuring out what we were going to do with the building,” Vostrejs said last week. They rented out classrooms as art studios at a fraction of the market rent for three years, at one point housing 50 working and exhibiting artists.
The owners gathered focus groups consisting of business owners, workers and residents, to learn what would bring them to the building, located in the Golden Triangle neighborhood. Their biggest desire was to open it to the public and make it an affordable “third place” to commune outside of work and home, he said. And so, repurposed science-room tables on wheels line the main hallway, ready to be used by remote employees or students on laptops.
The cafe next to the main entrance wraps around most of the sun-exposed room, beginning with a display case for panini sandwiches, salads and other grab-and-go items. From there, customers can order coffee and, later in the day, wine and frozen rose slushies, espresso martinis and cocktails. There’s also an ice-cream counter (a request from the focus groups, Vostrejs said).
The beer garden across the hall is modeled after other City Street Investors properties across the city: Lowry Beer Garden, Edgewater Beer Garden and Green Valley Ranch Beer Garden. There are 18 beers on tap, most of which are Colorado brews; pub fare like brats, burgers and fries; and salads and poke.
The food and beer concessions are located in the former school’s cafeteria. On a wall hung up are the school’s design plans, detailing every floor and subdivision of what was designed by architect David Dryden to be a children’s elementary school. The Evans School was open for 69 years, and its history lives on beyond the building. City Street Investors’ own marketing director, Kirsten Becker, said her father, John Ness, who is 87, was a student there.
Velour banners with artwork of fish, fowl and fauna hang from the tall ceilings of a lower seating area connected to the cafeteria. They were designed by Colorado installation artist Lonnie Hanzon as an aesthetic solution to dampen noise and chatter, Vostrejs said.
The Evans School — a 35,000-square-foot building with three stories — was in disrepair and, aside from the artists, mostly vacant for 50 years. The developers upgraded the plumbing, electrical, mechanical systems and restrooms and preserved original elements like the wooden floorboards and the stairways’ brass-and-copper handrails.
Aside from the beer garden and cafe, they are remodeling classrooms for retailers and the second-floor auditorium for private events, Vostrejs said. They’ll lease the upstairs floor as office space, he said. For now, these areas are off-limits to the public.
The building grounds, surrounded by black metal gates erected by the previous owner, is Vostrejs’ favorite part of the property.
“This really is the best outdoor space in the Golden Triangle,” he said. “The most egalitarian use that you can [have], really, is a beer garden, because it’s just open seating.”
And the exterior of the building, with its classical facade and copper-toned cupola, is stunning, its style only heightened as the city and its buildings have changed around it.
